Posted on 06/14/2022 4:38:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber
I don’t pretend to be an expert (or maybe I do), but cost is probably the big issue. The old 50’s promise of “too cheap to meter” met up with the reality of “why should we charge less than coal?” The same applies in reverse. If it costs more than coal, they’ll just use coal.
I always thought they should build reactors or store waste at a subduction zone and let plate tectonics take the whole thing down to melt. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust and all.
>> What I call the “energy storage conundrum” is the obvious but largely unrecognized problem <<
This is how you know your source is an unserious, muck-racking no-nothing. Your utility companies are spending tens of billions of dollars on this issue. It’s problematic to say it’s well in hand, since lithium is a big issue in global politics because it sure as HELL is NOT an UNRECOGNIZED problem, but there’s no mystery about how this shakes out, so it’s not anything that needs vastly more attention than it’s getting. And newer technologies are already ensuring that we’ll replace the need for lithium long before it runs out.
Only “fossil” fuels and/or nuclear can supply the needs of an industrialized economy. We know that the left wants to destroy our industrialized economy. So the quickest way to do that is to eliminate production of petroleum products, which they are now doing.
The clam that hydrogen can pass through steel walls got my curiosity up. Turns out that’s not exactly true: It passes into but not through the walls. But that process, steel embrittlement, is a pretty funky phenomenon.
First thing I thought of.lol
“Hydrogen Is Unlikely Ever To Be A Viable Solution To The Energy Storage Conundrum”
Duh..... that’s because it has to be designed as an on-board on-demand system to be viable.
too expensive.
I don’t know why they don’t create city-size nuke generators like those used in nuke powered subs and aircraft carriers.
Those COULD be buried for security
AOC has a new Perpetual Motion Machine to power the world , Her Mouth
Better solution - face the truth that there is no such thing as man man climate change, ignore all environmentalist, and go back to what works.
Coal burning power plants and build more dams for Hydro electric power.
Low cost energy is the road to wealth for a nation.
The reality is that we shall be relying on hydrocarbon fuels for decades, if not centuries, into the future. As a storage medium for energy, it is hard to beat.
Now if you want hydrogen, in great quantity, then beginning with coal, make coke from it by heating in a retort in the absence of oxygen. The volatiles driven off range from tar to methane, and only the carbon remains. Ignite the coke with an oxygen supply until the embers reach a steady temperature above 1,000 degrees, then introduce an atomized water spray. The temperature will dip a little, but the water in combination with the carbon of the coke forms carbon monoxide, an excellent fuel in its own right, and free hydrogen, which is much lighter than the carbon monoxide, and may be separated by perhaps some osmotic process. The remaining carbon monoxide is piped off to be burned, forming carbon dioxide, and the heat energy used to generate electricity. the whole concept behind “clean coal”.
No fly ash, no mercury, no volatiles, which were cooked off earlier.
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Town_gas
Another method, which uses waste and organic trash, is the Plasma Trash Reduction system. The trash material is shredded into very small granules, and fed into a plasma arc within a closed retort, in the absence of oxygen. The plasma torch, ignited by an outside source of electricity, then generates temperatures nearly that of the surface of the sun, some 33,000 degrees F. The waste stream is dropped into this plasma torch, stripping the external electrons of every element that falls through it, reducing the elements to their ions. Free hydrogen and carbon monoxide are the primary products of this plasma incineration, and the ions of every other element then fall to the bottom of the retort, as a white-hot slag, which is drained off on a continuous basis. The hydrogen and carbon monoxide is then used as a fuel to generate electricity on-site, about six times the amount necessary to ignite and maintain the plasma arc. Not exactly fusion energy, but certainly on a par with direct application of solar energy.
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/plasma-arc-recycling.html
As a sort of “new technology” in the 1950’s and 1960’s, uranium-fueled light water reactor power generation plants were funded and built relatively close to industry and residential user locations. These nuclear power plants could run 24/7/365 at flat-out maximum output for YEARS before needing refueling, but this meant that “spent” uranium fuel rods, which still retained about 97% of residual power, had to be removed and either reprocessed, or kept in storage for periods ranging up to something like 10,000 years before the residual radioactivity died down.
Enter several technical and engineering advances, making it possible to use thorium, a much more available and stable nuclear fuel, to build thorium-fueled molten salt nuclear reactors, which can also run 24/7/365 flat-out full maximum for years, but are inherently much safer, and also as important, can be scaled up or down in size to fit the locality. Because of the design, there is no possibility of having a meltdown that releases a large radioactive cloud, like the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear disasters. And perhaps even more important than any other reason for adoption, the “spent” uranium fuel rods must be used to initiate the thorium-fueled reaction which does not start spontaneously, eventually consuming most or all of the fuel rods now in storage, so the world does not have to wait 10,000 years for them to become relatively harmless.
——wealth——
“Posessing wealth is a crime against humanity”......AOC
“If you want stored solar energy just use nuclear fission.”
Nuclear is the elephant in many rooms.
So many issues, so many questions, NO ANSWERS!!!
Anyone ever heard of a power storage facility???
The only one I can think of is what was found beneath cross country telephone microwave towers that have pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird. A building full of batteries. I believe it was to power the line if the microwave link went down. I’m not an AT&T guy so that could be bad info.
Power is produced and consumed. Storage is something else and is usually associated with self contained solar power systems in a home or RV.
Hydrogen fuel cells? That particular problem has been worked at least since I was in College back in the late fifties. Basically zero progress. It ain’t viable yet and that’s it.
The power grid is a known quantity, or was until radical stupidity came into fashion. Now it is a shadow of what it needs to be to power America. Time to get on with LIFE and stop the stupidity of the left from destroying what our forefathers built for us to enjoy and maintain.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The safest and easiest way to store hydrogen energy is in a carbon source. In doing do the carbon source, say coal, is converted to a hydrocarbon. The hydrocarbon can be easily stored with our current infrastructure. What is the hydrocarbon?,...manufacturing grade petroleum.
face the truth that there is no such thing as man man climate change
No can do. Think of the embarrassment.
The only real advantage to hydrogen is it’s in almost limitless supply.
________
Not really. There is NO free hydrogen on Earth. All hydrogen is bound in water and many other minerals.
It takes a lot energy (more than it would be delivered back) to make hydrogen.
If we had some pipeline from the Sun, that would be greet. Sun has a lot of free hydrogen.
As a matter of fact, hydrogen does not has that much energy in itself. Burning a mole of hydrogen is a lot less effective than mole of natural gas.
The only thing, which makes not so smart people loving hydrogen is that it is light!
So there is a lot of energy in a Pound of hydrogen, but only, because a pound of hydrogen is a lot of hydrogen!
If only there was away to combine Hydrogen with Carbon and make a perfect fuel that takes many forms.
Also, in the book “Skunk Works” by Ben Rich, they were developing an SR-71 replacement that would be hydrogen fueled. He went into great detail about the extreme dangers and difficulty of storing the huge amounts of hydrogen needed for just one aircraft program.
This is like looking for something besides grass for cattle in the field to eat. Use hydrocarbons.
Snicker... you’re my hero.
One word: CARBON
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